Soldiers
by M. D. Jensen
Summary: Maybe the most difficult person to say goodbye to sticks out in your memory as the person you said it to first. David watches them leave.


Disclaimer: Not mine.

Go ahead and be harsh; it's the first thing I've written in almost a year.

_Soldiers_

Colby leaves surrounded by a team of police, his face hooded in shame. He leaves everything behind at his desk; he has no right to any of it anymore. David picks through it, resisting the urge to smash all the fragile items. He'd regret it later. He's not like Colby, not a fighter. A soldier, maybe, but not that kind of man, selfish in the selflessness, who puts the Fight in front of themselves, and in front of their friends. He pushes Colby's chair under his desk; he misses him more than hates him, although it's a close race. The first is the worst, he supposes; although, actually, he's seen people leave before Colby. Maybe in his mind, it's the hardest time that is the original and not the other way around; maybe the most difficult person to say goodbye to sticks out in your memory as the person you said it to first.

* * *

A few months later, Megan surprises no one by leaving, although David wishes she'd given it a little more time. Her truly terrible assignment was over; now all she had to worry about was the somewhat terrible ones. But it was her choice, and he accepted and supported it, even when her replacement paled in comparison as an analyst and a friend. When it's over, it's over. A few years later, David receives a letter saying she's married, pregnant and happy in Washington State. He replies, but the correspondence ends with him.

* * *

Larry continues to fade slowly after his return to Earth. Although David had never been particularly close with him, he does notice his absence. The office becomes plainer, somehow; less vibrant without his eccentricities. As far as David knows, he never actually leaves California so much as leaves the world. After Megan, he never dates again. Charlie says he's stopped teaching more than the bare minimum, and seems content to let his research and projects go unfinished. David sees him around occasionally, but for all intents and purposes, the man is gone.

* * *

Like the song, Amita gets out of California and goes to Boston. Harvard suits her, he thinks; he can see her in the New England weather, standing by that other ocean. She's a pretty girl, and kind, but he doesn't miss her so much as he watches Charlie miss her. He sees what it does to him in slow motion, as her emails stop coming and distance kills another romance.

* * *

Don blames himself for everything, even what's not his fault, as always. He drinks himself into an oblivion and crashes his car into a tree one night. He survives, only to be taken down by a Staph infection at the hospital five weeks later. Although it gives them a chance to say goodbye (more than once, in fact), David wishes that the impact itself had done it. It's not fitting for Don to die in a hospital bed, hooked up to such an impersonal plethora of machines; but he does.

* * *

Technically, Charlie dies of Hodgkin's Lymphoma, about three years after Don. In David's opinion, though, he just gives up. Surely he'd fight it with his brother around to cheer him on; with his brother around to live for. Don's gone, though, and Charlie dies of a disease with a ninety-odd rate of survival. David knows that he had always wished he'd simply been in the passenger's seat that night.

* * *

After both his boys are gone, Alan occupies himself by consulting. With his city planning knowledge, sometimes he's almost as useful as Charlie had been; under different circumstances, David would tell him that. He'd get a kick out of it. Circumstances are what they are, though, and Alan goes in his sleep about two years after Charlie, just shy of his 83rd birthday. David sits with Larry Fleinhardt at the service, going through the motions. They're both getting far too used to Jewish funerals.

* * *

David marries late, so he and his wife speed along and have three children in four years. All the godparents are her friends, none of his. In his fifties, as his daughters get their driver's permits one after the other, he takes the offer of an job in the office. He watches his children grow from the safety of a position where he doesn't have to be afraid anymore- at least, not of the future. David's first grandchild is born when he is seventy-nine. He lives to see her first everything- Christmas, birthday, tooth- but not her second of much. It's time to leave the Fight to the next round of soldiers. He lets go, and his body doesn't follow. 


End file.
